The Virginian

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

In unenlightened Americans, mothers and fathers who kill their children are convicted of murder. However, really smart people like

Academic philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva—shockingly working in Australia … have written a peer-reviewed paper in which they say that killing newborns is A-OK, and even in some cases to be encouraged

.
Killing the unwanted did not die out with the Nazis. We're past the time when revulsing at their ethics holds us back.

It may be interesting for you history buffs to learn that in ancient Rome, the father in the family had the right to kill any of his children, at any age. We may be getting ready to praise the ethics of those men who live several thousand years ago.

Gerard Vanderleun comments: The Scum of the Earth Are Quite Naturally Found in the Academy

It’s a devastating picture of blighted youth that threatens to distort Spain’s social fabric for years to come, dooming dreams, straining family structures and eroding the well-being of a rapidly aging population.

“This puts the whole welfare state at risk,” said Gayle Allard, a labor market specialist at Madrid’s IE Business School. “The young people who are coming on the market now are the lost generation. They are losing the advantage of their youth and energy and that does not come back.”

What happens when a generation reaches maturity just as the welfare state which was their future goes bankrupt?

In the US, fantasies are coming to a close. Ryan Crocker sends a ‘secret cable’ warning that the persistence of enemy havens in Pakistan was placing the success of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in jeopardy. After the riots and killings there who can doubt it even as the top generals and State Department officials tell us that everything’s fine, things are going to plan.

Europe hopes to survive the winter; they’re paying $9 per gallon of gas in Holland and Energy Secretary Chu hopes that this price will soon reach the US.

What comes next? It may pay to be ready for a major change in direction; a new realignment of many forces. We may be approaching the hinge of history.

First, the way you initially get on the Shit List is by having your society based on the inherently xenophobic and violent Muslim law. Unfair? Yes indeed, and I am sorry for you, I really am - you have drawn the short straw of history. Tough titty.

But good news - there is an easy way to get off the Shit List! You just have to renounce the parts of Muslim law that make it easy for you to do bad things to me and mine. Those would be the parts where I am considered no more than an animal because I am not a Muslim like you, and also the parts where even your own women aren't either. Free and educated women could exert a calming and civilizing influence over the hordes of sexually frustrated young men your societies seem uniquely adept at producing. Oh, and adopt democracy - ...

So there is an Easy Way of getting off the Shit List, but there is also a Hard Way. Imagine for example the FBI's "10 Most Wanted" list. The Easy Way to get off it is to turn yourself in, serve your time, and then stay out of trouble. Simple - maybe not so easy if you are a habitual, addicted, criminal, but at least easy to understand, no?

The Hard Way to get off the FBI's List is like how Bonnie and Clyde got off it. Think of it as the way where there is zero recidivism ...

Monday, February 27, 2012

Here is a video that shows what Pakistanis do with the Koran. Now you understand why the riots and killing are not a genuine reaction to Americans burning Korans, but a deliberate political move to speed our exit from Afghanistan? This part of the world smells weakness like no other and Obama projects weakness to America’s enemies.

Do you get the sneaking feeling that this whole burned Koran thing, like the flushed Koran thing a few years ago is really an excuse, and that the reason is that you can get Muslims to riot about virtually anything, especially as they like to express their hated of Americans?

The recent Koran-burning in Afghanistan has again inspired lunacy and murder. And while the US civilian and military leadership burdened by their oleaginous apologies tumbles down a moral stairwell, Afghan security forces continue to murder American and Coalition troops. Insider violence persists at an increasing rate. Approximately 200 Coalition members have been killed or wounded in nearly fifty documented “green on blue” attacks.

Noticeably absent from the airwaves is a definitive apology from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a vow to fight this treachery committed by his troops. Instead, we are likely to hear Karzai whining about night raids that his own troops help conduct every night.

We should immediately cut off all aid to Afghanistan until we hear a public apology from Karzai, and a denouncement from Karzai of Coalition murders by Afghan troops. We should end all unnecessarily joint operations, training, and support of Afghan forces until we have public assurances from Karzai that the Afghan government strongly condemns the increasing murders of Coalition members. Armed Afghans should not be allowed onto US aircraft. Our people do missions every night with armed Afghans on our helicopters. It would be nothing to take down a CH-47 from the inside.

You can forget about the Afghanistanation of this war. The Karzia government and its troops are not trustworthy. The entire Obama rationale and schedule for pulling out is in shambles, and he’s the reason.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

As gas nears $5-a-gallon out west, the president, who has cancelled a key pipeline and frozen federal leases from Alaska to the East Coast, teaches us about American algae potential, in the way he used to emphasize the importance of tire pressure and “tune-ups.” ... Energy Secretary Chu cannot and will not say a word about soaring gas prices, since he is on record not so long ago hoping that they might double — that is, get to $8- to 10-a-gallon as they are in Europe. ...

The more Afghans kill Americans, the more the president seems to apologize for our troops disposing of confiscated Korans, desecrated by Muslim-terrorist detainees.

The Obama Apology Tour™ Doesn’t Seem to be Working

Two American officers were shot dead inside the Interior Ministry building here on Saturday, and NATO responded by immediately pulling all its advisers out of Afghan ministries in Kabul, in a deepening of the crisis over the American military’s burning of Korans at a NATO military base.

KUNDUZ/KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Seven U.S. military trainers were wounded on Sunday when a grenade was thrown at their base in northern Afghanistan, police said, as anti-Western fury deepened over the burning of the Koran at a NATO base.

What has happened to the Obama magic? The guy that was gonna slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet seems to be having a little trouble calming the crazies in Afghanistan. But then he hasn't even handled people killing each other over Air Jordan's here at home. He might want to pull back on the rhetoric just a smidge for this next campaign.

It turns out that the oceans are not rising and although no one asked, be prepared for him to take credit. Ask him about the planet healing and he'll tell you it would be worse without him. Ending the killing over Air Jordans is above his pay grade. He has toned down the rhetoric, having stated that he is not a king. Of course that's his way of blaming congress for whatever's wrong.

The recent Koran-burning in Afghanistan has again inspired lunacy and murder. And while the US civilian and military leadership burdened by their oleaginous apologies tumbles down a moral stairwell, Afghan security forces continue to murder American and Coalition troops. Insider violence persists at an increasing rate. Approximately 200 Coalition members have been killed or wounded in nearly fifty documented “green on blue” attacks.

Noticeably absent from the airwaves is a definitive apology from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a vow to fight this treachery committed by his troops. Instead, we are likely to hear Karzai whining about night raids that his own troops help conduct every night.

We should immediately cut off all aid to Afghanistan until we hear a public apology from Karzai, and a denouncement from Karzai of Coalition murders by Afghan troops. We should end all unnecessarily joint operations, training, and support of Afghan forces until we have public assurances from Karzai that the Afghan government strongly condemns the increasing murders of Coalition members. Armed Afghans should not be allowed onto US aircraft. Our people do missions every night with armed Afghans on our helicopters. It would be nothing to take down a CH-47 from the inside.

A123 Systems, an electric car battery company once touted as a stimulus "success story" by former Gov. Jennifer Granhom, D-Mich., has laid off 125 employees since receiving $390 million in government subsidies

But who says it's not a success? It is for the people at the top.

... this month A123’s Compensation Committee approved a $30,000 raise for [Chief Financial Officer David] Prystash ... Robert Johnson, vice president of the energy solutions group, got a 20.7 percent pay increase going from $331,250 to $400,000, while Jason Forcier, vice president of the automotive solutions group, saw his pay increase from $331,250 to $350,000. Prystash’s raise was 8.5 percent, going from $350,000 to $380,000.

"It looks like they are trying to pad their top people’s wallets in case something really bad happens," Paul Chesser, associate fellow for the National Legal & Policy Center, suggested.

And you ought to see their golden parachutes! Layoffs are for the little people and who cares about the money, it's only taxpayer money.

Virginia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jamie Radtke has asked the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to launch a formal investigation into abusive actions by the IRS toward Tea Party and Patriot organizations

On Tuesday, Jamie Radtke, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Virginia, asked California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa to investigate what she said was unfair treatment of tea party groups by the Internal Revenue Service. Issa chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Radtke is a former president of the Richmond Tea Party, a group which applied for tax-exempt charitable status in December 2009.

“After waiting two and a half years for approval,” Radtke wrote, “the IRS recently communicated a new set of overly-burdensome and invasive demands for information that exceed the scope of the IRS code.”

Those demands, Radtke said in a press release, included the answers to “12 additional questions in 53 separate parts.” The Richmond Tea Party was also ordered to hand over a list of all its donors and volunteers.

“There is a pattern of IRS activity toward Tea Party and Patriot organizations that includes unwarranted delays and overly burdensome information requests that divert the energy and resources of those groups from their missions. This behavior chills the exercise of free speech and free association by the groups’ members and supporters,” Radtke wrote.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Now, it turns out a better question might be whether Democratic voters would accept a Mormon candidate. In a survey that cuts against the media stereotype, a new Gallup Poll has found that more Democrats than Republicans say they would not vote for a Mormon for president. Twenty-seven percent of Democrats say they wouldn't vote for a Mormon, while 18 percent of Republicans say the same. For independents, the figure is 19 percent.

Friday, February 24, 2012

What does one do with defaced Korans?

What is the proper disposal method for Korans that are old, defaced or have been replaced by newer, better Korans? Apparently burning them is a no-no. At least that is what we have been led to believe by the MSM.

Flags you can burn. Bibles you can burn. But burn a Koran and you get riots and killing. In this case the Koran burning led one Afghan soldier to kill two US servicemen.

"until the doers of such inhumane actions are prosecuted and punished."

"We should attack their military bases, their military convoys, we should kill their soldiers, arrest their invading soldiers, beat them up and give a kind of lesson to them that they never dare to insult the holy Koran," the message said.

He top General in Afghanistan apologized for burning the Korans. Obama apologized for burning the Korans. Note that the part about the death of our soldiers came at the very end of the UPI story, providing us with some guidance about what the state controlled media considers important.

For some reason none of the Afghans has given any thought to saying they’re sorry for the killing. Perhaps it’s a Muslim thing.

Oh wait … NPR tells us that the proper way of disposal is burning! An imam said so.

The Quran is considered to be the speech of God to human kind — word for word — explains Imam Johari Abdul-Malik.

"The traditional way of disposing of used or damaged copies of the text of the Quran is by burning it," he says.

But Malik, the director of outreach for the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., says that doesn't include burning it with the trash. That's what U.S. officials say mistakenly happened with the Qurans in Afghanistan.

Ah, that’s the problem. There was no separate fire for the Korans!

There are as many ways of disposing of Bibles as there are Christian denominations. Despite NPR – for whom Christianity is exotic, faintly repulsive unexplored territory - there really is nothing authoritative from any denomination and certainly no one in Christendom would shoot someone else for burning a defaced bible. Many Bibles are thrown away which means that they are mixed in with the trash.

Do you get the sneaking feeling that this whole burned Koran thing, like the flushed Koran thing a few years ago is really an excuse, and that the reason is that you can get Muslims to riot about virtually anything, especially as they like to express their hated of Americans?

He works at the New York Times as their in-house opinion racist. At the Times he provides the racial hatred that the editors can’t express in their white skins. He becomes their surrogate, their black lawn jockey, house negro, their puppet expressing their loathing for the bourgeoisie.

Why is there a rancorous Republican primary?

It is increasingly difficult to argue that the GOP is benefiting from the struggle between Mitt Romney and the challenger — alternately outsider and insider, hefty and svelte, conservative and more conservative — who isn’t Romney. Internal Republican ideological debates, while interesting to Republican ideologists, have little relationship to electoral needs. The longer these controversies continue, the longer President Obama has to regain his political balance.

So why is this struggle going on? The reason is fairly simple. There is an ideological struggle going on within the Republican Party.

The Democrats settled their years ago. The Democrats have become the Party of the Left, the party of Hollywood, San Francisco, and billionaires who tell us that they want to pay more taxes to keep the pitchfork wielding mobs at bay. The so-called “moderates” – if they exist at all – live on in a totally powerless rump that is only part of the Democrat Party out of tradition.

The Democrats are the party of Barack Obama, the party of Chicago politics, the party of Jeremiah Wright, the “God dammed America” party, the Pelosi and Reed party, the America is always wrong party, the "why are we not more like Europe" party, the Christians are dangerous nuts party, the party that believes America was conceived in sin and ravages the planet. That may not be how they campaign on the national level. Barack Obama ran as a supporter of traditional marriage: one man to one woman. But no one really believes that or that he will defend that position. He ran as a budget balancer, blaming Bush for his deficits, and has run up deficits that were literally unimaginable during the 2008 election. Glenn Beck predicted it and he has now been banished to the wilderness for daring to say it and be right. Obama is the wink and nudge president, saying the things that keep the moderates in line but his fellow Leftists know that he is lying through his teeth. They understand.

The Republicans are moving in the direction of the old Conservatives, the party of Bill Buckley in his prime and the newly energized Tea Party. But the old line Republican “establishment” that once dominated the party is not yet the toothless, powerless rump that the Democrats made their “moderates.” The Republican Establishment still dominates the big money game, giving them an edge in buying the advertising and staffing that often wins elections. They have pedigrees going back at least one generation. They have mega-millions in the bank. They have rolodexes with the private phone numbers of the old line industrialists who still give big bucks to the Republican Party. George Romney is a perfect example: son of a former governor of Michigan, wealthy, impeccably groomed and now given to wearing open necked shirts and blue jeans to appeal to the middle class. He can command the millions to roll in, but …. he cannot command the enthusiasm of the people who vote. His hope of winning both the nomination and the election is the fear of a second Obama term. There are very few votes for George Romney, many against Obama.

Conservatives like Santorum gain points from the Republican Right for being the next not-Romney. But as interest in Santorum grows, some of his beliefs that the MSM demonizes are already converting some of the Right. Genuine belief in God may seem bizarre to the media mavens, as is belief in the Devil. If they attend religious services at all, they are accustomed to homilies that fit neatly into their environmentalist and Health-Education-Welfare catechism. In case you have not been paying attention, their pews are emptying, just as they are all but abandoned in Europe. Who needs a church as a social program with a clerical collar? But tens if not hundreds of millions of Americans are actually religious with traditional belief in God. Instead of being a Santorum weakness, it is one of his strengths. Outside of traditional Christianity, Santorum can voice the issues and concerns that animate Middle America, striking a true note rather than lip-synching it as Romney does too often. And because he believes what he says, he does not make the fatal mistake of backing away when challenged. Nothing kills a candidate faster than apologizing for his past.

It remains to be seen if the Conservative faction of the Republican tent comes out victorious this time, dragging the old Establishment along because of its fear of Obama. In the Republican Party the direction is obvious. The ideological Right is going to dominate. The only question is when.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Montgomery College is revising plans to offer a summer class on the Occupy Wall Street movement -- geared toward high school students -- after residents complained that the class is promoting the Occupy movement's agenda to students.

The course in question, part of a summer program for students in grades 9 through 12, is called "Occupy MoCo!" (which, coincidentally, is also the Twitter handle of what appears to be a branch of the Occupy movement based in Montgomery County).

The course description asks students if they're "ready to join the movement for justice" and adds that "young people have the power to change their community, their schools, their future."

Montgomery College spokeswoman Elizabeth Homan is quoted as saying that

"It wasn't advocating or taking any stance on the Occupy movement. It's taking a current events subject that all the students have either read about or heard on the news and using it as a pivot point to talk about what's happening historically."

I sent Ms. Homan the following message:

Many people are curious about the content of the course which emphasizes an overwhelmingly Left-wing movement when not that long ago we saw hundreds of thousand of people in the streets under the Tea Party banner. A movement, moreover that has had a profound and proven impact on American politics in terms of getting people elected. The OWS movement by contrast was small, sometimes violent, attracted criminals and has thus far helped elect no-one. Can you explain why your college has chosen the latter rather than the former for your educational model?

Media Matters founder David Brock finally broke his silence and set the record straight

Monday, February 20, 2012

Michelle Obama's 17th Vacation - This Time in Vail.

That's where the old, really big money goes. It's hard to get there unless you have a private jet.

Madame First Lady and First Daughters did not get to Colorado on their own dime. The cost of jetting them around the word would break the Obama piggy bank (despite their multi-million dollar net worth). I also have a feeling that they are not paying their full freight when they stay at resorts owned by campaign contributors just as I don’t pay my friends when I stay at their place. So the statement that “personal expenses” are being paid by the Obamas is not very meaningful unless you show us the bill. If you want to accept a White House handout as the final word on the cost of this – and Christmas in Hawaii, last summer at Martha’s Vineyard, the jaunt to Spain, taking Air Force one for a date in NY City, you get the impression that the White House is a dump that Michelle and the kids can’t wait to leave.

This trip is not an isolated incident but a series of in-your-face examples of Marie Antoinette extravagance when people back home are out of work or, if they are lucky, living paycheck to paycheck while it’s party time for the Obamas.

-- President’s Day 2012, Michelle and the first daughters in Aspen, Colorado to ski.-- Christmas 2011, the first family in Hawaii for an extended vacation.-- Summer 2011, in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., for the annual beach break.-- June 2011, the first lady, her mother and daughters traveled to South Africa and Botswana.-- President’s Day 2011, the first lady and first daughters travel to Vail to ski.-- Christmas 2010, in Hawaii.-- August 2010, the first family traveled to Panama City Beach, Fla., for some sun and fun at the beach.-- August 2010, Obama spent the weekend alone in Chicago for his 49th birthday bash.-- August 2010, the first lady and daughter Sasha traveled to Spain for a mother-daughter vacation.-- August 2010, summer vacation again at Martha’s Vineyard.-- July 2010, the first family went to Mount Desert Island, Maine.-- May 2010, the first family had a four-day trip to Chicago.-- March 2010, first lady and daughter spend Spring Break in New York City.-- Christmas 2009, Hawaii again for the annual break.-- August 2009, at Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon for a short vacation.-- August 2009, their first summer vacation as first family at Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

“Fast and Furious happened, Breitbart explained, ‘for the purposes of creating a narrative that they could use in America to try and thwart our Second Amendment constitutional rights. I don’t think the most sinister screenwriter could imagine a government that would abide by that, let alone the media to cover that up.”

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Dolly Parton: "I will always love you."

Hail Caesar. And every knee shall bow.

The people who write for the Virginian Pilot have faith that their readers are as stupid and bigoted as they are. In their latest assault on reason and morals they claim – and I’m not making this up –

“Insurance companies don't mind [giving free birth control pills, condoms, tubal ligation and abortion pills], because contraception is far less expensive than what it prevents.”

What the editorial’s writers want you to believe is that insurance companies are happy to spend billions of dollars paying for condoms, birth control pills, tubal ligations and abortion pills because that way they won’t be paying for live births. Even though they price the medical costs of having babies into their health care premiums. This is so breathtakingly stupid that even the writers can’t believe it unless they have been brain damaged.

“Because birth control is critical to a woman's right to make decisions about her health, and because the Catholic Church's many hospitals and schools employ nonbelievers, the administration decided to preserve access to no-cost contraception by making insurance companies pay for it.”

And where is the insurance company going to come up with the money to pay for contraception and abortion? Despite the assertions of the Virginian Pilot's editorial writers contraception is not "no-cost," not even if the Obama administration drafts every doctor and nationalizes every drug company.

Is it coming from “Obama’s stash?” Maybe the Virginian Pilot's editorial writer was one of those people in Detroit signing up for ObamaDollars from Obama's stash.

Insurance companies will not be in business long if they started giving stuff away. The money they are not paying for live births? You mean that contraceptives will end live births? For the sake of people planning to retire and collect social security, we should hope not! The simple answer is that if the Obama edict is going to be enforced, the cost is going to be shifted to other coverage. The people who pay for these Obama mandated policies are going to be paying for services that they don’t need, want, or find morally repugnant and that is not limited to Catholics.

The Brokest Nation in History is mandating “free” birth control when the cost of obtaining it is less than the cost of a tankful of gas. Want an abortion? Go to Planned Parenthood and for the cost of a few pairs of sneakers you can have your baby killed in the womb.

How about this lie?

“The decision allows the Catholic Church to maintain its religious principles. It preserves a woman's right to birth control.”

No, the Catholic Church is mandated to provide insurance policies that include services that it deems sinful, violating its fundamental religious principles. More, it violates the separation of church and state. You remember how outraged the irreligious Left was about school prayer? Now the government is telling religions that they must obey government edits that do violence to their most fundamental beliefs and the Virginian Pilot who never met a school prayer that it did not condemn, gives full throated support to the state telling a religion what it must do. The issue was never about the cost of the insurance, it was always about the coverage of the policies. To imply the opposite is to lie. And the woman’s right to birth control is was never an issue before the Obama edict. The edict simply forces other people to pay for birth control and abortion services.

“The irony is thick: In an effort to prevent government from telling a religion what to do, a religion seems eager to tell government what to do about everyone else.”

Pure bullshit. There is no better example of Liberals in government - and the Government’s lapdog media - eager to tell everyone else what to do. The Catholic Church has no power to tell anyone what to do. The Government has the power to force you to comply with its wishes at the point of a gun.

The irony is thick and the lies are sickening.

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, distills the current hysteria thus: "It's as if we passed a law requiring mosques to sell bacon and then, when people objected, responded by saying 'What's wrong with bacon? You're trying to ban bacon!!!!'" .... People are free to buy bacon, and free to buy condoms. But the state has no compelling interest to force either down your throat.

This is the way we lose our individual freedom. This is the assault on religious freedom and freedom of conscience that we find in totalitarian societies. Dictators and evil always comes in the guise of good: in this case disguised as “health care.” Is there literally no limit to the ways that the Left wants to control and dominate you? So far, we have not seen any. God must bow to Caesar because Caesar has a gun, and the media is on Caesar's side.

UPDATE: Perhaps we should be a little more forgiving to the brain damaged yahoos who wrote that Virginian Pilot editorial. I’m talking about their ludicrous claim that the birth control and abortion mandate will be revenue neutral for insurance companies. You remember the argument: giving birth control pills and paying for abortions is less costly than paying for a woman to give birth? It appears that instead of making that stupid argument all by themselves, they are repeating a talking point from the Obama administration. Which means that there is now no question that it’s a lie. We are reinforced in our opinion by this article from The Hill “Insurance industry could take hit from birth control mandate”

“Privately, however, insurers say there's nothing "free" about preventing unwarranted pregnancies. They say the mandate also covers costly surgical sterilization procedures, and that in any case even the pill has up-front costs.

"Saying it's revenue-neutral doesn't mean it's free and that you're not paying for it," an industry source told The Hill.

Doctors still have to be paid to prescribe the pill, drugmakers and pharmacists have to be paid to provide it - and all that money has to come from insurance premiums, not future hypothetical savings, the source said.”

The insurance industry is very dependent on the government and is not going to stick it’s neck out to oppose Obama on the record so they are not going to go on the record in opposition. They are simply going to increase premiums to cover the mandate.

Here is another indication of the Obama administration’s view of childbirth: it’s an illness. I quote from the White House fact sheet:

“Covering contraception is cost neutral since it saves money by keeping women healthy and preventing spending on other health services,"

Let me repeat that for people who are not paying attention or who are cheering the government’s edicts on religion: contraception “keeps women healthy!” The next time you see a pregnant woman; know that by definition of the Obama administration, and the editorial page of the Virginian Pilot, she is diseased.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Foster Fries told an old joke about contraception in the old days, saying: “On this contraceptive thing, my Gosh it’s such [sic] inexpensive,” he added. “You know, back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.”

I have heard that joke for years. But suddenly the media mavens that revel in the freedom that gives us pornography on grocery store shelves and the number one topic on the Internet; the same press that demands the free distribution of birth control pills, demonizes people that oppose homosexual marriage and those who oppose killing unborn children, has the vapors about this joke. Andrea Mitchell needs to catch her breath after being told an old joke; what is he, a nun? Even nuns have heard this one without blushing.

Has anyone watched TV or gone to a movie the last few decades? The entertainment media would not exist without sex jokes, sex acts between both animate and inanimate objects, and gratuitous nudity, and Andrea Mitchell has to catch her breath about a little joke that mentions women’s knees and an aspirin tablet?

I have heard about faking it, but the Left media is jumping the shark with this one.

Kicking the can down the road. Geithner: "We have a problem" and we don't have an answer.

“We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem," Geithner told Ryan. "What we do know is we don’t like yours.”

There you have it. The administration has dropped any pretense. It's more comfortable attacking Ryan's plan than offering an alternate solution.

The crisis has arrived, we are in the early stages of financial ruin and the answer from Team Obama seems to be that by the time we hit the wall they will be out of office. They will have retired, snug in their multi-million dollar cocoons while the retirees figure out how to get along with reduced pensions and their children are faced with staggering tax bills to pay down debt run up by this administration.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

After applying for tax-exempt 501(c)(4)status over two years ago, the IRS has the Richmond Tea Party on it's stall-list via endless request for more information, including a totally inappropriate request for a full list of donors and volunteers.

The Richmond Tea Party claims this kerfuffle with the IRS reinforces their view of the government. “This illustrates everything the American people find unacceptable from their government,” the group says. “A simple request for tax-exempt status should not take years to complete, involve hundreds of pages of documentation, require hundreds of volunteer hours, and request private information we should never have to disclose. This grants the Federal Government the dangerous power to selectively stymie those voices with which they disagree, bogging them down in endless paperwork and compliance costs so that they are unable to spend time serving the principles they founded their organization to advance.”

Keep this in mind when you read about the White House and (tax excempt) Media Matters conspiring to manage the new for the benefit of the Obama regime.

When is a tax not a tax?

The DOJ is wrong when it claims the ObamaCare mandate is a tax, says … Obama’s OMB chief

And Obama insist it's not a tax.

But the Obama "Justice Department" is defending ObamaCare because it falls under Congress' power to tax.

Have we gotten to he point that different parts of the Obama administration can make diametrically opposed arguments and the MSM simply refuses to note it? Is the MSM so totally part of the Obama administration? Based on the evidence, the answer is YES.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Why should abortions or birth control pills be handed out free for the asking?

Why is buying birth control pills an insurance issue? Insurance is designed to cover catastrophic things that can break a person financially. Buying birth control pills is not either surprising or unexpected, neither is buying aspirin or a cold remedy. It’s an ordinary part of – some female – people’s lives. It may cost $20 a month. If you want to get an abortion the cost is in line with a Bill Clinton or John Edwards haircut (as Ann Coulter points out). What is it about these particular medicines or procedures that they should be given out free, like candy on Valentine’s Day, via government edict? They are not the pressing medical issues of the day and are morally repugnant to a meaningful portion of the population.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Did you know that there is an extensive docket of materials available online in the long-running Wile E. Coyote v. Acme Company case? As anyone over the age of 30 probably knows, Mr. Coyote for many years attempted to use Acme products in his pursuit of an elusive Road Runner. Without exception, to my knowledge, his efforts failed, often resulting in severe and unusual bodily injury. Not surprisingly, it appears that Mr. Coyote has elected to pursue a case against Acme for product liability and gross negligence.

Consider some of Mr. Coyote allegations:•The Rocket Sled: Coyote alleges that the Rocket Sled accelerated with "such sudden and precipitate force as to stretch Mr. Coyote's forelimbs to a length of fifteen feet." Later, due to "poor design and engineering on the Rocket Sled and a faulty or non-existent steering system ... the unchecked progress of the Rocket Sled led it and Mr. Coyote into collision with the side of a mesa."

From the beginnings of recorded thought, intellectuals have told us their activity is most valuable. Plato valued the rational faculty above courage and the appetites and deemed that philosophers should rule; Aristotle held that intellectual contemplation was the highest activity. It is not surprising that surviving texts record this high evaluation of intellectual activity. The people who formulated evaluations, who wrote them down with reasons to back them up, were intellectuals, after all. They were praising themselves. Those who valued other things more than thinking things through with words, whether hunting or power or uninterrupted sensual pleasure, did not bother to leave enduring written records. Only the intellectual worked out a theory of who was best.

Winston Churchill is supposed to have said that he was sure that history would be kind to him because he intended to write that history. That's why the intellectual class has such a high opinion of itself; they are the ones who write the opinions that are read. It's why kooky ideas are treated seriously like gay marriage, multiculturalism and global warming. Even after they have been proven disastrous in actual practice, socialism and communism are treated seriously because they are the means by which the intellectual class gains power and they can dismiss the actual practice and propound they theory where everything works as planned.

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

America and Rome

How many times has the US been compared to Rome?

Thousands … millions?

The focus is primarily on the aspect of “Empire” since American influence extends far beyond the boundaries of ancient Rome. To many, influence – cultural or political – is trotted out as the same thing as establishing an empire. But make no mistake, the Roman Empire was not spread through culture but by the invasion of Roman armies that was followed by Roman plunder, the appointment of Roman governors and the imposition of Roman taxes. There was no such thing as Roman foreign aid.

What is interesting to a historian is that while America is not imposing Roman rule, Roman morals are rapidly being adopted by America.

Of course no-fault divorce was not a Roman invention but a Roman practice.

So was the adoption of adults into other families, primarily for financial reasons.

There were no Roman laws against abortion; in fact, the Roman father had a perfect right to kill his children if they displeased him, giving late-term abortions a new meaning (post-birth abortion?) that is sure to be upheld as a Constitutional right by the Ninth Circuit, if not the Supreme Court, in the near future.

Homosexuality was not high on the Roman acceptance list but neither was it illegal. In fact, a number of Roman emperors and dictators (Lucius Cornelius Sulla) had male lovers. Colleen McCullough has a wonderful series of novels (referred to as the “Masters of Rome”) depicting life in Rome near the end of the Republic and the beginning of Imperial rule depicting with accuracy the manners and morals of that time and place.

We are reminded that there really is nothing new under the sun. The practices, morals and laws that our Liberal friends believe are new and groundbreaking are nothing more than a reversion to some of the most ancient cultural attributes that western civilization outgrew - for a time. A mere 50 years ago who knew that Roman morals would make a comeback instead of being discarded as part of a cruder, ruder pagan time.

Rush Limbaugh segment on Clint Eastwood "Halftime in America"

In the brave new world of sexual arrangements Liberals are creating there's this: some lawyers are advising their clients to adopt their lovers, making your sexual partner your legal child.

Believe it or not, there is a growing trend in this country of adopting one’s adult lover or spouse for various reasons: to better guarantee the adoptee’s right to inherit directly from the adoptor; to keep other relatives from having any standing to contest an estate plan; or, as in Goodman’s case, to add a spouse or lover to a class of trust beneficiaries, allowing the “child” to inherit from the “parent.” Courts around the country are struggling to figure out whether these adoptions should be upheld or not....

But before you go out and adopt your lover, there is one pretty serious repercussion you should consider: Are you committing incest? An incest conviction can result in serious jail time. And think about it: The adopter is having sexual relations with his or her legal child. Is that not incest?

... or perhaps we can ask the 9th Circuit Court if having sexual relations with your child is an unconstitutional infringement of the rights of incest perpetrators. That's an awkward way of putting it. There should be a name for this; what are people who commit incest called?

The "Arts" and "Academia" are Drawn to Fascism.

“Many Nazi officials came from the educated middle class of German society, and in his comments on the trial of Einsatzgruppen members in Nuremberg after the war, the British historian Gerald Reitlinger (author of The SS, Alibi of a Nation, a superb study of the SS) observed of the defendants that ‘the only common denominator was that nearly all had been to a university and the majority had achieved the doctorate so dear to the German middle class.’ The idea of Nazi intellectuals may be troubling to some, but as has long been known, intellectuals rose to power in the systems of both fascism (meaning both Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy) and the Leninist-Stalinist version of communism. Hitler and Stalin required the talents of writers, organizers, and, yes, artists to accomplish their ends.”

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Fast and Furious, the gun-walking operation that created an avalanche of traceable guns being shipped to Mexican drug cartels never made sense to me as a law enforcement operation. The cover story is that the program was designed to identify the cartel leaders. That’s a ridiculous cover story. Everyone in Mexico knows who the cartel leaders are; many of the cops are already on the payroll.

The program was specifically designed to identify weapons purchased in American gun shops after they were used to murder Mexicans. The only thing that could be learned was the identity of the shop in which the gun was sold, and the US government already knew that because its agents authorized the sale.

Whether Operation Fast and Furious was a legitimate law enforcement operation, as the Department of Justice claims, or was part of a plot to impose gun control, it was radically different from all other border gun operations in one crucial way. Operation Fast and Furious was the only border gun operation that was undertaken with the full intention of the straw-purchased guns leaving the control of law enforcement officers and reaching the armories of drug cartel murderers. That fact alone should lead to the impeachment or administrative removal of everyone, from field agents to political appointees and elected officials that knew or should have known about the plot.

But that is only half of the horror story.

Operation Fast and Furious was specifically conceived so that “walked” guns would be recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Their serial numbers would be provided to the ATF by Mexican authorities for tracing. Regardless of motive, the entire operation was premised on weapons being recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, and law enforcement agencies are well aware that criminals primarily abandon weapons only after they’ve been used in serious felony crimes such as murder or attempted murder.

Operation Fast and Furious was conceived knowing that Mexican nationals would be sacrificed in significant numbers if the tracing operation had any chance of working

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A comment by cfbleacers makes the most sense:

1. I don’t know, Bob. Something about this entire story doesn’t add up.

It feels to me as if a number of pieces are missing.

1. The American federal law enforcement community wants to identify the shooters of Mexican nationals on Mexican turf, by using American gun shops to intentionally run guns to Mexican drug cartels?

Say this slowly. Take each part separately, disassemble it and then put it back together.

1.Does somebody believe that the Mexican government does not know who is at the head of the Mexican drug cartels?

A. Let me disabuse any layman of the notion that nearly EVERY high ranking Mexican government official doesn’t know EXACTLY who is at the head of the Mexican drug cartels. They have been dealing with them directly, trying to work with them to avoid destroying the tourism trade and negotiating with them to try to control the violence.

2. Does somebody believe that AMERICAN law enforcement does not know about gang trafficking of guns and drugs, operating on both sides of the border, often using undocumented illegals to use our borders as a sieve? Operating in our prisons and in virtually every state in the union, but especially border states?

A. Let me disabuse any layman of the notion that organized crime is NOT at the heart of nearly all the violent crime, drug abuse and terrorization of our major metropolitan areas. Or that law enforcement in AMERICA doesn’t know EXACTLY who these gangbangers are.

3. So, why would they try to have guns sold from here, to be used in crimes there, to trace to people they already know well…that kill Mexican citizens… over whom we have no authority to investigate when they are victims of crimes…in which we essentially aided and abetted committing as a government program?

A. A junior grade, rookie, Barney Fife level detective would see the holes in this in two minutes. “Identifying” the gang that commits a crime is a strawman, in this scenario. The cartels are known commodities. The gangs here are known commodities.

The coverup story hides something deeper. Much deeper.

As long as the murders stayed on the other side of the border, or within the gang infestation on this side of the border, the plan is useless.

The gangbanger that shot Brian Terry tripped up the game. The ONLY way this makes any sense, is if the guns made it BACK across the border. And…wound up at crime scenes HERE.

Now…try to piece together the narrative. “AMERICAN gun shops are responsible for killing minority youths, by assisting the gun and drug cartels. AMERICAN officials are able to trace guns from AMERICAN gun shops into Mexico and then back into the AMERICAN inner cities.

AMERICA and the NRA NUTS are the bad guys, who needs to APOLOGIZE to Mexico …AND to the parents of youth in the inner cities and major metropolitan areas for CAUSING violent crime. People don’t kill people..guns do. ”

This doesn’t look, feel, smell like a law enforcement project. It has all the earmarks of a community organizer’s project. Plant evidence, stir up trouble…point at the trouble. The harder the 2nd amendment defenders argue, the more you point at the trouble. Until they capitulate.

Work through this slowly. “Identifying the user” is a head fake. They KNOW the user…hell, they SOLD to the user. And…300 dead Mexicans are crimes we can’t investigate. What’s the play here? THAT’S the coverup.

The only thing that makes sense of Fast and Furious is that it was a cold blooded project to use murdered Mexicans and Americans as a publicity ploy to enact draconian gun control laws based on a plot by the Obama administration under the supervision of the Holder Department of Justice. Literally no other rationale makes sense.

The eurocrisis has been front and center for nearly two years, during which time the economic and financial fundamentals have continued to deteriorate. “The Arab Spring” came suddenly, in a series of outbursts of optimism. It may have come at the worst possible time for the beleaguered nations of the North Shore.

The Mediterranean has entered one of the stormiest periods in recorded history. It is the major contributor to risk in global equity markets. It is too soon to predict how these crises will end.

The Cradle of Civilization is rocking amid an array of winds and storms.

Monday, February 06, 2012

Obama's Jesus Nod and Wink

Obama has started to use Jesus to try and justify his horrible policies, which seems pretty blasphemous. You know how the media freaks out about a coming theocracy if a Republican even mentions God, but Obama can claim that he did all his policies for religious reasons and the media won’t care? I think a big part of that is that when a liberal invokes God, no one really takes them seriously. Actually, I think half the time in Obama’s speech, he pronounced the Son of God’s name as “Jebus”.

Barack Hussein Obama has invoked Jesus for his proposal to hike taxes:

President Obama offered a new line of reasoning for hiking taxes on the rich on Thursday, saying at the National Prayer Breakfast that his policy proposals are shaped by his religious beliefs.

Coming from a Republican with well-known religious beliefs - George Bush comes to mind - invoking Christianity as the basis for a policy decision would be greeted with howls of outrage coupled with ridicule and the warning that the government was turning the country into a theocracy. So why are the only people noting the rise of the Obama Theocracy people on the Right?

Simple: no one on the Left believes for a moment that Obama means it.

The fact is, those people who rise to prominence as Democrats may proclaim their religious affiliation, but everyone acknowledges that when it comes to faith and politics, faith takes – not just a back seat – but becomes a sock puppet and supports whatever political position the Left espouses. Exhibit “A” at the moment is the famously Catholic Nancy Pelosi who is loudly proclaiming that forcing Catholic institutions to finance contraception and abortion is a Catholic as the Pope. She is also a strong abortion advocate, but with the exception of Bob Casey a few decades ago, that is a requirement of Democrat office holders, and is not new.

Obama, Pelosi, (and Bill Clinton carrying his oversized Bible during the Lewinski scandal) are, in the immortal words of the late Sen. Pat Moynihan, shoveling “boob bait for the bubbas.” They are proclaiming their religious beliefs with a huge wink and nod to their supporters who know they don’t mean it; not for a moment.

I think a very partial answer to the question Ms. Daley poses is that leftism has never been based on idealism. It has always been based, for the most part, on hate and envy. So when Communism was conclusively proved to be a failure, leftists (including not only leftists in politics, but more important, leftists in the media and in academia) didn’t change their minds or admit their mistake. For in their eyes, while there may have been disappointment, there was no mistake. Their resentments and hatreds remained. They merely sought other vehicles, other terminologies, other tactics to bring down the West and the free enterprise system and democratic institutions that define it. Yesterday’s socialists are today’s progressives. They barely missed a beat.

She always called him “Mr. President” — not Jack. He refused to kiss her on the lips when they made love. But Mimi Alford, a White House intern from New Jersey, was smitten nonetheless.

She was in the midst of an 18-month affair with the most powerful man in the world, sharing not only John F. Kennedy’s bed but also some of his darkest and most intimate moments.

In her explosive new tell-all, “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath,” Alford, now a 69-year-old grandmother and retired New York City church administrator, sets the record straight in searingly candid detail.

A Time magazine blogger reported Thursday that the Sierra Club, America’s oldest and most august environmental organization, accepted millions of dollars in donations from one of the nation’s biggest natural gas-drilling companies for a program lambasting coal-fired power plants as environmental evildoers.

The Sierra Club's new buyer is Billionaire Michael Bloomberg who also bought the New York City Mayoralty.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged $50 million from his personal philanthropy in July 2011 for the anti-coal program.

Kentucky Coal Association president Bill Bissett told the meeting that Chesapeake has also funded the American Lung Association’s Clean Air Initiative. The result, he said, is that the lung health group has attacked the coal and oil lobbies while leaving the natural gas industry alone.

It's takers versus makers and these days the takers are winning

And an important point of Sykes’ book is that moocher-culture isn’t limited to farmers or welfare queens. The moocher-vs-sucker divide isn’t between the rich and poor, but between those who support themselves and those nursing at the government teat.

Plenty of the wealthy are doing the latter, and that has its own consequences, which are often worse than those stemming from goodies for the poor.

In a world of bailouts and crony capitalism - which is to say, in the world we live in today - a rational businessperson has to compare the return on investment between improving a product or service, or lobbying the government for goodies.

Frequently, the latter looks better: If you spend $1 million on lobbying, and get a $1 billion subsidy from the government, that’s a thousand-fold return on your money.

It’s hard to do one-hundredth as well through actual capitalism. So why bother to improve your products at all? Just hire more lobbyists.

Of course, the government can provide such rewards only because it has vast resources of coercive power, and vast stocks of other people’s money.

Deploying those resources for self-serving political purposes is nothing new, but - as Sykes points out in considerable detail - things are much worse now than they were during previous periods of excess.

He points out that the real problem is the fact that the US government operates well outside of the limits imposed by the constitution, giving it access to money and power is was never granted.

Railroad Tracks

Here's something on the width of railroad tracks that came via e-mail. Don't know if it's true and some of it is a stretch, but it makes a certain amount of sense.

Railroad tracks.

The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So, who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?' , you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!

Now you know, Horses' Asses control almost everything...
Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?